The recent hardware upgrade left the server vulnerable to worms

January 25, 2003 10:17 AM

Alas, there was a critical fact overlooked on the recent hardware upgrade, one which left the server vulnerable to the [sapphire|slammer|SQ hell] worm. All's better now.
posted by delfuego to Uptime at 10:17 AM (17 comments total)

Don't forget to donate to the ailing MetaServer here.
posted by the fire you left me at 10:19 AM on January 25, 2003

naw, don't worry about donating, it was just a mistake on the admin side of things (I dropped the ball by trusting Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer which said all the patches were in place) after the hard drive move.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:21 AM on January 25, 2003

Is the People's Liberation SQL Worm Attack and the Glorious Internet Outage over with?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 10:41 AM on January 25, 2003

hmm. coldfusion server seems to refuse to write out files right now, so there's no RSS, and the index page is blank for nonmembers.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:42 AM on January 25, 2003

Have you figured out how it got to the SQL service without port 1434 being available?
posted by machaus at 10:43 AM on January 25, 2003

Nope, but since the move, old IIS patches weren't applied (but reported as applied), so they might have used a second exploit for that.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:48 AM on January 25, 2003

*stops knawing on the arm of his dead neighbor after hearing news that the apocalypse wasn't happening*

Shit. I'd better pack this body in the freezer or something.

Does this mean that I can't make slashdotty jokes about the incompetence of admins who didn't patch? ok ok kidding.
posted by Stan Chin at 10:57 AM on January 25, 2003

B) Cowboy Neal
posted by quonsar at 11:04 AM on January 25, 2003

Thank god for Matt's DSL connection. IRC is our saviour.
posted by riffola at 11:22 AM on January 25, 2003

Weird. I can get into MeTa, but when I try MeFi, I only get the sidebar and the blue background, with a message saying "connection failure." So I guess this means I actually have to shut off my computer and go do something involving fresh air.
posted by scody at 11:57 AM on January 25, 2003

Hah! Now I get it! I couldn't sign in on the MeFi front page (because that tool bar wouldn't load -- I'd just get the side bar), but now that I signed in via MeTa, the crisis is averted. No need for fresh air after all. Whew!

Besides, after reading this from Stan Chin...
*stops knawing on the arm of his dead neighbor after hearing news that the apocalypse wasn't happening*
...I have to clean the coffee off my monitor anyway.
posted by scody at 12:06 PM on January 25, 2003

What riffola said. I learned a lot on #mefi last night. :)
posted by Lynsey at 12:19 PM on January 25, 2003

forget everything immediately or we'll have to kill you.
posted by quonsar at 3:08 PM on January 25, 2003

I'm getting tired of hearing about what great fun #mefi is. Since I'm a complete idiot, I'm going to try to post (on - ahem - another site) a screenshot of what I see when I try (and try) to configure mIRC. Maybe one of you technowizards can tell me the obvious thing I'm doing wrong.
posted by yhbc at 7:11 PM on January 25, 2003

yhbc, fire up mIRC, just ignore the config, and type in the following:
/server irc.turlyming.com
Once connected type
/nick yhbc (only the very first time)
followed by
/join #mefi
posted by riffola at 10:28 PM on January 25, 2003

Success! Thanks, riffola.
posted by yhbc at 9:35 AM on January 26, 2003

*thrilled that somehow, with all the tweaking the Mattster has done lately, that it is no longer necessary to go down the Metatalk trail in order to be logged in to the front page*

You don't have to understand it. Just share my joy.

God bless you, Mr. Haughey.
posted by konolia at 1:23 PM on January 26, 2003